CDC Taps Publicis for Healthy Youth Initiative

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has selected an integrated communications team including Publicis Dialog to promote healthy lifestyles and displace unhealthy, risky behaviors among youth.

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 27—The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has selected an integrated communications team including Publicis Dialog to promote healthy lifestyles and displace unhealthy, risky behaviors among youth. CDC is committing $125 million to its national youth media campaign, which will include advertising, promotion, public relations, events and grassroots activities.

Publicis Dialog will work with sister agencies Saatchi & Saatchi, which will handle advertising, and Frankel, which will serve as the lead agency with specific responsibilities for the national event tour, online efforts, partnership development and local and grassroots initiatives

The goal of the campaign is to promote positive lifestyles, such as physical activity, among tweens and their influencers: parents, teens, teachers, coaches and others. According to the CDC, lifelong health behaviors are established during childhood.

According to Publicis Dialog chief creative officer Steve Bryant, “Our office in Chicago has served a varied and broad base of clients whose primary focus has been communicating their products and services to youth markets, which also include their parents. We have worked on health and nutrition initiatives, lifestyle issues, diet, physical fitness and health and beauty. We will be able to leverage this depth of experience in developing a successful communications program for CDC.”

Rose Ann Anschuetz, who heads up the Chicago office—formerly Selz Seabolt—will play a key role in the firm’s work with CDC. She has a doctoral degree in clinical child psychology and had a private practice in clinical child psychology prior to joining the communications industry.

“Our agencies’ remarkable collective strength in youth and behavioral marketing promises to significantly enhance life-long health habits among the young Americans who represent our future,” says Andy Hopson, president and chief operating officer of Publicis Dialog in the US.

The Publicis Groupe agencies will be working closely with two minority owned agencies, A Partnership, Inc. and Garcia LKS 360º, whose expertise in multicultural marketing will round out the campaign.